Quick trip to Chicago and the Sardarji’s Murgi Posto

1985, the year that I arrived in the US, was a banner year for Chicago.  The Bears had won the Superbowl, Chicago Shuffle was soaring up the charts, and Mike Ditka—the blue collar man’s blue collar coach was the toast of the town when he wasn't fighting his defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan.  Enoute to the US, I had met a man at Bangkok airport, a Chicago metallurgist, and we spoke about Debye-Scherrer cameras and his city.  He had told me it was called the Windy City and I formed images in my mind of a large jetliner landing in Chicago with its wings buffeted by rousing gusts of wind. 

As I stayed on in this country, I came to learn that Chicago was one of four cities in the US with a distinct personality.  That it was one of two cities in the US where you did not need to own a car.  That this was the place that became the commercial hub for the Blues in the early part of the 20^th. Century.  Over the years I learned about Al Capone, about Leonard Chess, I learned about the city’s history of corrupt politicians; I spent 3 years in the Midwest--within a day’s drive to Chicago--but it took me 27 more years to actually visit the city.

Entering a new city, particularly an American one where the obsession with streamlining makes every city look and feel like the next one, one often starts the trip not really noticing anything new, till a sudden defining characteristic unloads a hammer strike of cognition.  For me it was the exit sign for Racine Boulevard on the the freeway, that brought to mind the address scrawled on the inside flap of a matchbook—1634 Racine—viewed by an assassin under a dim 1920s Chicago streetlamp, as he plotted the demise of one of the “Untouchables” in the movie by the same name.

We stroll around around Michigan Avenue as the wind flirts with us.  It is late March and the weather still manages to land a few harsh, incisive licks like a boxer slipping in jabs at the end of a round. Heavy stone holds the soul of this city’s downtown. Enormous stone and concrete buildings dominate, spaced by wide pavements and streets.  Not quite Tokyo in sheer size, it is however more massive than New York. The wide boulevards lined with upscale stores are periodically short circuited by narrow alleyways with dim lights and raw brickwork reminiscent of an earlier time.  The next day we would see similar heavy set stone work in the gothic architecture of the University of Chicago. Those buildings, which probably looked like ponderous caricatures of European universities when they were built in the 1890s, look distinguished today with vines crisscrossing the exterior walls of buildings.

Chicago is more down to earth than Manhattan, and folks seem better dressed, in an intellectual way, compared to Manhattan.  There is also a slightly older sense of style—I saw several men in suit, cravat, and a hat, of the kind you would see in American photographs from the earlier twentieth century.  It is a more homogeneous and less cosmopolitan population compared to New York or Los Angeles.

We took a long ride north along Lake Shore Drive, a road that curves along Lake Michigan, with green spaces and bike paths inbetween the road and the lake.  Chicago has the midwest’s defining characteristic—a mind boggling flatness, and this flatness just runs straight into the Lake.  A tinted haziness prevented us from looking far out, but the scenery looked dismal and forlorn going out to the water. Large, 70s style buildings in dull concrete and glass line the sea sized Lake Michigan, and everywhere in March there is a post winter tentativeness in the air as joggers experiment with varied apparel in response to the changing weather.  Driving out about 20 minutes, the downtown lapses into suburbia full of high rise apartment buildings that looked about 3-4 decades old, with orderly bus stops and convenience stores, not unlike the residential suburbs of Seoul or Tokyo. 

I visit my college friend P, who moved to Chicago from Delhi in 2000 and, improbably, plays as a blues guitarist in Chicago’s bars.  He takes me to his basement and we handle some of his “investments”--expensive guitars arrayed on the floor in pricey felt lined cases amidst a maze of cables and amplifiers. The intervening years and the city have been kind to his musical skills--he sounds much improved from yesteryear.  Like the mythical Delhi restaurateur who opened a pizza shop in Rome, my friend has the cojones, as well as the talent to play as a serious amateur blues guitarist in Chicago. But then this is the age of the transplanted specialist—M this evening is cooking a Bengali specialty, Murgi Posto (chicken with poppy seeds), after getting culinary advise from a Bengali speaking Sardarji chef on Youtube.   Check it out, it is a nice dish (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgJZhMtZb7I). 

The Great Debate: Columbia vs. Howard, March 02, 2013

The Great Debate is a series that began in 2007, pitting historically black colleges against Ivy League schools in public debates on socially relevant topics.  It was inspired by the movie, The Great Debaters, which recounts the story of a debate during the Jim Crow 1930s between the historically black Wiley College and Harvard (in reality it was against USC who, as the reigning champions of the day, were beaten by Wiley in that encounter).  Yesterday, one of these debates was held in Harlem between Columbia University and Howard University.

 The First Corinthian Baptist Church, an ornate and grand building which began its life as Regents Theater, a 1913 movie palace, stands in Harlem, at the intersection of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd. and 115^th. Street. Wide pavements and elegant buildings blend together celebrating this city’s magnificence and offering a pointer to what this city must have looked like a hundred years ago.  It was here that the debate was held, in front of a packed house, and for the first time outside of a college campus.

Half an hour prior to the start, the theater was mostly filled.  Local political bosses and community representatives milled around the auditorium front, trying to stay out of the way of the sound and lights guys putting their final touches on the arrangements. Mr. John Liu, the New York City Comptroller arrived with perfect hair and a radiant smile, shaking hands, patting arms, exchanging small talk in the way seasoned bureaucrats do.

The afternoon began on time, at 3:30, with rousing speeches by the president of the NAACP and the church pastor.  They were strong, fluid, emotional messages that could get the hair on one’s skin to stand up.  They extolled the importance of debate, of intellectual argument, of education. The crowd responded with passion.  It was a very different New York City, one that I was much less familiar with, and a sharp departure from the dressed in black “what’s-in-it-for-me” Manhattan, and the “where is my favorite barista” Manhattan (barristers seeking baristas). Voter registration booths and college information desks had been set up in the foyer outside.  It was a Saturday afternoon, and over a thousand people were here to listen to a debate between college students.

One of the privileges of being an immigrant is that even after nearly thirty years in the country, you can still take an outsider’s far field view.  Today, this view brought to focus the media’s indifference towards this community on subjects that fall outside of stereotypes.  I scanned Google news the next morning and found not a single item in a major city newspaper that described the event.  In this city’s distorted social circus, a large and relevant gathering of debate enthusiasts organized by the NAACP and attended by so many from near and far, with some members of the audience bused in from as far as Connecticut, takes a backseat to noting in print, inconsequential marriages between the children of the city’s bankers and corporate captains.

Mr Liu got things rolling and gave an upbeat address: the teams he said would debate important issues.  His reliance on generic terms and autopilot speech led me to wonder whether he actually knew what the topic of the debate was.

After his speech, Mr. Liu shook a few more hands and left the building.  The debate started. There were two motions for the afternoon’s oratory—the appropriateness of the stop and frisk practice; and whether hand gun control was necessary. The stop and frisk law is in effect in New York City, where a police officer can frisk someone based simply upon suspicion.  Over 90% of those searched are Blacks and Hispanics and a majority of them wind up being unnecessary.  It is a tinderbox of a topic.  The Columbia University team spoke against the practice.  Howard University supported it. The situation here was a bit difficult. Columbia was the “home school” with its Harlem location, yet it was part of a bevy of elite ivy colleges where over 40% of admissions are from private schools.  Them lecturing Howard on the perils of stop and frisk could be interpreted as surrealistic, but the Howard speaker reminded the audience in his opening speech that this was an intellectual debate, the crowd was fair and focused, and the playing field for the opponents remained level.  The exchanges were eloquent, the moderator was funny, and there were sharp parries and rebuttals with, at times, interesting inversions.  Following a rhetoric filled Columbia salvo, an exasperated Howard University debater noted that he did not need a lecture on racism.

Upon conclusion of the debate the stage turned into a melee of photograph taking, and there was a warmth in the proceedings that is hard to find. The large circle of photographers clicked away as middle school debaters and members of the audience posed with the participants and the moderator. A lone Bangladeshi reporter wandered around looking lost.  He was an independent journalist and was going to file a report. 

A reception for the speakers was held before the debate began. The president of the NAACP, the charismatic Mr. Benjamin Jealous was there.  He beckoned a Columbia debater towards him.  “I can’t let you represent my alma mater wearing your tie like that”.  And then proceeded to re-knot the young man’s tie.  It was a moment that the young man will remember for many years to come.

Anjappar, Chettinad Indian Restaurant, Milpitas, CA

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On a quick trip to Santa Clara I was able to have dinner at Anjappar, with my friend KC.  The Indian expat community in silicon valley is so large that the Indian restaurants here have transmogrified into the real thing, rather than appearing to be transplanted sets on a stage. Groups of Indian customers sat around at different tables; this could be a café in Jamshedpur, or a restaurant in Mumbai, where young men and women gather to sit back after a day’s work.  Similar to what you might see in the Bangladeshi restaurants in Jackson Heights on an evening, except that these guys here are talking about chip tapeouts and software releases.

Anjappar is a chain that originated in Chennai and aims to bring you the cuisine of the Chettiars from Chettinad, in Tamil Nadu.  Well, times have changed and so must have the cuisine of the Chettiars, for the menu is extensive and includes Chinese-Indian noodle dishes.   It was one of the longest menus that I have seen and leaves no stone unturned.  I had a vegetarian thali—a combination of various curries, dal, sambar, rasam, rice,  roti, and a few limpid papads. The food was too spicy for my tastes, but this is the norm with this type of cuisine so one has to accept this going in. South Indian 2 meter coffee was authentic.  The ambience was authentic, I could almost imagine a guy riding in his 2 seater Bajaj Vespa scooter with his wife on the pillion, helmet in hand.  But those were the old days--I doubt anyone does that even in India anymore.

Doaba Deli, 945 Columbus Ave, New York

I have been raving about too many Indian places lately, but I cannot help but rave about one more.  One, that for 7 bucks, will put most other places to shame.

The name, Doaba Deli, has a lilt to it.  It is as if the Pied Piper from a hamlet in the Doaba, a fertile region straddled by the Beas and the Sutlet rivers in Punjab, has been playing his culinary music and bringing home cooked vegetarian Punjabi food to throngs of taxidrivers, whose cars line the footpaths outside this tiny, cramped restaurant. 

Inside, there is a line of Sikhs and a few scattered locals waiting patiently for the cook cum cashier who has kept all on hold while he makes some rotis. There is a tiny kitchen and a small sit-in area that accommodates about 3 tables and a counter for taking your meals standing.  The walls are lined with religious pictures. 

And what food it was.  Seven dollar a plate.  Includes 4 items in a compartmented Styrofoam thali, a cup of hot Punjabi chai, one chapatti and one missi roti (a wheat and gram based chapatti).  We had sarson ka saag (spinach and mustard greens), a mixed curry of peas and cauliflowers, daal, a pureed turnip (shalgam) curry and a lauki (gourd) curry. 

We ordered and waited for the food in the small room heated to 52 ^oF with a space heater.  The cook was multiplexing as a cashier and our food would take a bit of time. Young and middle aged Sikh men stood at the counter eating and chatting in Punjabi.  A college going American couple waited at the next table.  A while later, one of the customers walked up to us and handed us our two teas.  Told me that the cook, shorthanded, had recruited him to deliver teas to the “uncle” sitting in the dining room.

 

When the food arrived it was fresh and tasted home cooked. Every single vegetable curry was perfectly made, you could not ask for more. The rotis had been made one at a time on a tawa: the meal reminded me of one I had had once in a small town in in Kutch more than 30 years ago which we had devoured with the same urgency that we did this afternoon.  This place was every bit as good an eating experience as Devi, at the other end of the spectrum of Indian restaurants in Manhattan.  Find me an Indian place that will give you a curry of gourd and turnips and not carry saag paneer!

 I have railed about honesty in Indian food lately—Indian food is not about ambiance and presentation, which is more of an occidental (and Japanese) trait, and it is not about obsequious staff and pretentious bric a brac. Doabi Deli, pulls out all the stops on this one—authenticity, freshness of the food, taste, and the warmth of the place inspite of its 52 ^oF ambience.  This is one place in Manhattan that seems unconcerned about time, about efficiency of service, about the kinds of things that we usually get all uptight about. The uncompromising cook takes his time making the rotis while the line accumulates at his counter, the backup is late in arriving, and customers are conscripted, impromtu as waiters.  It is this ambiance that works here, primarily because the food is so good, and the place is such an effective antidote to the cold and efficient Manhattan on the outside of its glass doors.  If you can accept an alternate model of romance in a restaurant that does not include candle lights and fine crystal, then you could even find this place to be romantic.

Why are so many Indian restaurants in the US so pretentious?

 “….he is not a man obsessed with the freshness of quality of his ingredients.  Cooking for him is a craft of spice and oil.  His food burns the tongue, and clogs the arteries. “  The Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid’s description of a cook in “The Third Born” aptly describes more than 90% of the cooking done at Indian restaurants in the United States.  These are blunt instruments that downsample Indian food into a monochrome of caricatures.  And they do so in restaurants named after the India of the princes and the India of the British, an ambiance desperate for an illusion of what was an illusion to start with.

Evoking grandeur and the exotic is an old formula. Here is the Indian writer R. K. Narayan, describing his experience at an Indian restaurant in the San Francisco of 1956: “Its elaborate and self-consciously planned Indian atmosphere, dim light, long coats, bogus Indian tunes out of gramophones hidden in the arras, more bogus bric-a-brac are deliberate, but I suppose, commercially successful.  Chappati and Indian curry are genuine and are not bogus.  A waitress clad in a sari, an usher in a long coat buttoned to the neck, create an Indian atmosphere, which seems to appeal to San Franciscans as I find all tables booked, and women dressed in caps and gowns, which outdo Fifth Avenue style, sit with an air of facing an impending adventure, while reading the menu card, and utter little cries of ‘delicious, delicious’, when they sample a curry.”

This could be a restaurant in Los Angeles today.  Gentle sitar music, can make it easier to chew on a tough naan.

Credit for this brand image has to be given to the first Indian restaurateur in the US, Prince Ranji Smile, a minor social character in the New York of the early 1900s, and a man of uncertain orgins and tall claims.  Ranji came to New York and spent several years as an Indian chef who held visiting appointments at some of the big restaurants of the day.  While he was never able to fulfil his dream of opening his own restaurant, he, more than any other, brought the message of Indian food as being something exotic, something brushing royalty, that—as he advertised—would make women more beautiful.

To be sure, Indian food is not considered highbrow.  Inglis and Gimlin give an interesting statistic in The Globalization of Food.  In the hierarchy of Zagat 2006 check averages, a measure of the “exclusivity” of the food,  Indian check averages stand at $33.85, below French ($47.81), Japanese (46.72), Italian (42.27), Greek (38.71), and Spanish (37.73).

Starting about 5 years ago, a new theme emerged in Indian restaurants—desi chic, inspired by Bollywood and the folksy color combinations promoted by Indian ad agencies.  The developments were apparent to me in the tale of two restaurants, almost next to one another, in Mt. Kisco, NY.  One of them is A Passage to India, straight out of E. M. Forster, a member of the old colonial genre that—as far as I could see—had been languishing for years.  Then came the impulsive upstart, a colorful chunky little joint called The Little Kebab Place, with remixed disasters of 70s Hindi classics thumping on its speakers, and truck art on its walls--nobody would trace its genes to Rajput royalty.  And this restaurant was packed.  So packed, that its owner bought out the two adjacent stores and expanded out into a couple of other restaurants.  The three places burst at the seams, while the old brand languishes.

There is a lesson to be learnt there.

And then there are the contemporary east-west fusion experiences in upscale Manhattan that will charge you the price of your first born for Indian street food presented as if it were French.  These are the places that get various assorted stars, from assorted city newspapers, from assorted critics who know Indian food like Indians know rock music. 

Indian food has always had to put on an act, the projection of an image that isn’t.  As if the food simply wasn't enough.  And, in many cases, it isn't.  There are exceptions to this hypothesis.  One is Shalimar in San Francisco, a rough-hewn Punjabi-Pakistani place that my friend C thinks could be a transplanted truck stop from India.  Mallu Cafe in Philadelphia, has the kind of unashamed originality that makes you want to throw back your collar and shove a handkerchief in it to soak in the heat. A third is Saravana Bhavan on Mary Road in San Jose, part of a successful international restaurant chain, that has maintained its stainless steel and tubelight like lighting innocence of a dosa place, where no means yes with a headshake.  And finally there is Neerob, in the Bronx, a Bangladeshi place, so original in its speech, being, and sounds that I find myself speaking in the rounded English of the Bengali when I am there, as in “nayeen owan phor” area code.  These are places that give you the ambiance of the original because—as far as I can see—there has been no attempt at gaming this.

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